It
has been my observation when counseling with lost people who are concerned
about their spiritual condition, and who are not at all assured of their
eternal destiny, that the words “saved” and “salvation” are frequently used,
but without any real awareness of what the salvation spoken of in the Bible
really is. Not that there is not some sense of foreboding, some awareness that
all is not well with your soul, with most lost people. However, there is no
firm comprehension of what is at stake, no real idea what the issues related to
God, related to final judgment, and related to the danger of endless punishment
happen to be. Most lost people give very little thought to God in any
meaningful and coherent way. They may acknowledge that God is, but they pay little
attention to what God is, who God is, and what He is like. Of course, that is a
fatal error.

I
illustrate by reading a passage to you showing the prophet Isaiah’s experience,
recorded in Isaiah 6.1-5:

1In the
year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and
lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

2Above it
stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face,
and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

3And one
cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of
his glory.

4And the
posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was
filled with smoke.

5Then said
I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have
seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

Whatever his concept
of God was before this experience, it was profoundly altered once the prophet
caught a glimpse of this One who is terrible in majesty.[1]
Once his understanding of God was illuminated by this vision, he saw himself in
a different light, as undone and defiled, and in the midst of a defiled people,
because his eyes had seen the King, the LORD
of hosts.

However,
this is not all. It is one thing to come to a true sight of yourself from an
understanding of God, His nature, His holiness, and His astonishing glory,
while it is quite a different thing to take note that this same God will
someday sit in judgment upon you.[2] That is
right. You will be held accountable someday by God for two things, your nature,
and your deeds.

Of
course, if you come up short on Judgment Day (and you will come up short on
Judgment Day, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”[3]), then you
will be cast into outer darkness, the lake of fire, that place of endless
punishment reserved for the Devil and his angels, as well as those who die
without Jesus Christ, the Savior of sinful men’s souls.[4]
However, once a sinner begins to think on God as He reveals Himself in
scripture, and then upon his own shortcomings related to God, he typically
begins to think about a means of escape for himself, an alternative to endless
punishment, or some way by which he can be reconciled to God. Thankfully, God
is gracious and merciful and has provided just such relief for the undeserving
sinner. It is called salvation.

Salvation
is a very broad term that is not found in the Bible as frequently as most people
who have not read the Bible might think. However, that is only because great
attention is paid to different aspects of salvation, forgiveness, conversion,
regeneration, justification, sanctification, glorification, along with others. Have
no fear, this morning. There is no requirement that you remember any long
words. I will restrict my comments to the very broad topic of salvation,
without focusing on the more difficult words and their meanings. However, I
would like to lay just a little bit of groundwork.

In
the Greek New Testament, the word “saved” and the word “salvation” commonly
translate the word swzw,
and the word swthria,
that were in common usage in the Greek-speaking world for centuries before the
time of Christ and His apostles. First, Greeks used these two words in connection
with “to save” and “salvation” in the sense of an acutely dynamic act in which
gods or men snatch others by force from serious peril.[5]
I usually introduce the concept of salvation to children by pointing out that
salvation has to do with being rescued from danger, as a lifeguard “saves”
someone from drowning, so they understand that salvation is more than a word. It
refers to the rescue from real and imminent danger of someone who is helpless. One
difference being that folks who are drowning usually know they are in danger,
while those who are lost and who need for their souls to be saved are usually
unaware of their real and imminent danger. This is where the Spirit of God
begins to work, with one of His initial tasks in the life of a sinner being to
persuade him of his lost condition and his genuine need of salvation.[6]

Another
problem I have seen, in addition to the tendency of people to think of
salvation apart from it being the very real rescue from very real danger, is
when people think of salvation without thinking of Jesus Christ. My friends,
any disconnect of salvation, or of being saved, from Jesus Christ is a serious
mistake. Keep very much in your thinking what the Apostle Peter forcefully
expressed in Acts 4.12 about Jesus Christ and any notion of salvation: “Neither
is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven
given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

Salvation
is a rescue from a very real danger, by Jesus Christ. However, we should ask,
what does Jesus Christ rescue people from? To put it another way, what does
Jesus save from? Matthew 1.21 shows us that before Jesus was born, Joseph was
told in a dream by an angel, among other things, “thou shalt call his name JESUS:
for he shall save his people from their sins.” Therefore, Jesus saves His
people from their sins. Alongside that, keep in mind that no less than ten
times in his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul makes mention of God’s
wrath.[7] Romans
5.9, being one of those mentions: “Much more then, being now justified by his
blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” Thus, Jesus saves His people
from their sins, which is to say that He saves people from the punishment of
their sins, the visitation of God’s wrath.

Our
text this morning is the initial portion of Hebrews 2.3: “How shall we escape,
if we neglect so great salvation?” How shall we escape God’s wrath, if we
neglect the great salvation Jesus provides? I want to speak to you about this
great salvation. However, I first want to read to you the comments about this
great salvation written by the 19th century commentator, Albert
Barnes:

So
great salvation. Salvation from sin and from hell. It is called great,
because (1) its Author is great. This is perhaps the main idea in this passage.
It “began to be spoken by the Lord;” it had for its author the Son of God, who
is so much superior to the angels; whom the angels were required to worship,
(Heb 1:6;) who is expressly called God, (Heb 1:8;) who made all things, and who
is eternal, (Heb 1:10-12.) A system of salvation promulgated by him must be of
infinite importance, and have a claim to the attention of man.

(2.) It
is great, because it saves from great sins. It is adapted to deliver
from all sins, no matter how aggravated. No one is saved who one feels that his
sins are small, or that they are of no consequence. Each sees his sins to be
black and aggravated; and each one who enters heaven, will go there feeling and
confessing that it is a great salvation which has brought such a sinner there.
Besides, this salvation delivers from all sin--no matter how gross and aggravated.
The adulterer, the murderer, the blasphemer, may come and be saved; and the
salvation which redeems such sinners from eternal ruin is great.

(3.) It
is great, because it saves from great dangers. The danger of an eternal hell
besets the path of each one. All do not see it; and all will not believe it
when told of it. But this danger hovers over the path of every mortal. The
danger of an eternal hell! Salvation from everlasting burnings! Deliverance
from unending ruin! Surely that salvation must be great which shall save from
such a doom! If that salvation is neglected, that danger still hangs over each
and every man. The gospel did not create that danger it came to deliver
from it. Whether the gospel be true or false, each man is by nature exposed to
eternal death--just as each one is exposed to temporal death, whether the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection be true or false.
The gospel comes to provide a remedy for dangers and woes--it does not create
them; it comes to deliver men from great dangers--not to plunge them into them.
Lacking the gospel, and before it was preached at all, men were in
danger of everlasting punishment; and that system which came to proclaim deliverance
from such a danger is great.

(4.)
The salvation itself is great in heaven. It exalts men to infinite honours, and
places on their heads an eternal crown. Heaven, with all its glories, is
offered to us; and such a deliverance, and such an elevation to eternal
honours, deserves to be called GREAT. If that is neglected, there is no other
salvation; and man must be inevitably destroyed.

(5.) It
is great, because it was effected by infinite displays of power, and wisdom,
and love. It was procured by the incarnation and humiliation of the Son of God.
It was accomplished amidst great sufferings and self-denials. It was attended
with great miracles. The tempest was stilled, and the deaf were made to hear
and the blind to see, and the dead were raised, and the sun was darkened, and
the rocks were rent. The whole series of wonders connected with the incarnation
and death of the Lord Jesus, was such as the world had not elsewhere seen, and
such as was fitted to hold the race in mute admiration and astonishment. If
this be so, then religion is no trifle. It is not a matter of little
importance, whether we embrace it or not. It is the most momentous of all the
concerns that pertain to man; and has a claim on his attention which nothing
else can have. Yet the mass of men live in the neglect of it. It is not that
they are professedly Atheists, or Deists, or that they are immoral or profane;
it is not that they oppose it, and ridicule it, and despise it; it is that they
simply neglect it. They pass it by, They attend to other things. They are busy
with their pleasures, or in their counting-houses-in their workshops, or on
their farms; they are engaged in politics or in book-making; and they neglect
religion NOW as a thing of small importance--proposing
to attend to it hereafter, as if they acted on the principle, that everything
else was to be attended to before religion.[8]

There
is an interesting story told about the venerable Bishop Moule and an encounter
he had with a Salvation Army lassie on the streets of Durham,
England in the latter
part of the nineteenth century. The young girl stopped him rather abruptly and
said: “Sir, are you saved?” With a winsome smile and a twinkle in his eye the
grand old Bible scholar replied: “Lassie, do you mean have I BEEN saved, or am
I BEING saved, or shall I yet BE saved?” Then, in a most gracious manner, the
aged Bishop proceeded to explain to the simple lass that God, in Christ, had
provided a salvation for us sinners that encompasses far more than deliverance
from the Lake of Fire.
It is salvation from the penalty of sin which alienated us from our Creator, to
complete restoration to Him. It is deliverance from the dominion or rule of sin
to the rule or dominion of the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is salvation from
even the presence of sin, in a day yet to come, unto a position of eternal
safety from all evil, debilitating forces. In short, the Bishop told the
Salvation Army lassie, Salvation is the continuous work of deliverance by the
One who was named Jesus, because He saves His people from their sins. (Matt.
1:21).

From
God’s standpoint as the One who is time-less and who dwells in eternity, it is
true that our salvation was accomplished once, and for all whom the Father
predetermined to save. On the other hand, from the point of view of the Elect
whose days are reckoned in terms of the passage of time, it helps to use the
“tenses” by which we describe time. Let us remember, however, that “salvation”
is a continuous process of deliverance and not something that happens at a
given point in time and then is all over with.[9]

Using
Bishop Moule’s comments as a jumping off point, I want to briefly examine what
might be called the “past tense” of salvation, salvation from the penalty of
sins. Keep in mind that we are engaged in a somewhat artificial dividing up of
this great matter of salvation into three inseparable pieces, which can be divided
in our considerations, though no division in reality is possible.

For
reasons that will be evident as we proceed, we take up the “past tense” of
salvation as a sequence related to an event:

First, BEFORE THE
“PAST TENSE” OF SALVATION BEGINS

Before
the “past tense” of salvation begins, which would be expressed by most people
as “before I was saved,” “before my conversion,” or “before I trusted Christ,”
the sinner is in a lost condition. We know this to be true because the
experience of everyone who has ever lived, excepting Adam and Eve who were
created in innocence, and the Lord Jesus Christ who is the eternal and sinless
Son of God, has been to be born in a state of sinfulness. This state of
sinfulness has to do with nature, rather than behavior, and is recognized by
David in Psalm 51.5: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my
mother conceive me.” Thus, the reason every man is a sinner is not because he
became a sinner by first committing a sin. That has been the experience of Adam
and Eve only. Everyone else has been conceived in sin and born sinful. The
result of having an inherited sinfulness is a natural tendency to commit sins. Psalm
58.3 declares, “. . . they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” No
wonder the Apostle Paul rehearsed the spiritual condition of the Ephesians
before they were saved by reminding them, in Ephesians 2.1, “And you hath he
quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” People may talk about the
concept of innocency in the lives of children who have not yet been saved from
their sins, but the Bible knows nothing of such innocency. Only Adam and Eve
were innocent for a time, and Jesus is holy. Everyone else before they are
saved is dead in trespasses and sins.

It
is to those who are spiritually dead, those who are lost in their sins, that
the saving gospel message must be brought, lest they die in their sins and
suffer a fate far worse than death, endless punishment. There are some who are
of a mind to think that only those who reject Jesus deserve Hell when they die,
somehow discounting the guiltiness of those sinners who have never heard the
gospel. However, endless punishment awaits the lost for their guiltiness in the
sight of God, not only for rejecting Jesus Christ. Were it otherwise, the worst
possible thing you could do to a sinner would be to preach the gospel to him,
since any rejection of the gospel would guarantee eternal torment for him. However,
the Lord Jesus Christ’s Great Commission to preach the gospel to every creature
is proof enough that people are already Hell-bound sinners, even before they
hear the gospel. Otherwise, preaching the gospel to a man would be a great
curse to him rather than a benefit.

Since
we know that salvation is not by works of righteousness which we have done,
there is no such thing as a person being almost saved, or what some claim when
they say, “He is getting close.” There are no degrees of salvation or lostness.
The lost are completely lost, and the only way to avoid the damnation of the
soul is to be completely saved.

Next, WHEN
SALVATION IN THE “PAST TENSE” OCCURS

There
is a most wonderful example in the Old Testament that shows the wonder of a
sinner being saved, Abraham when he believed in the LORD. Recognizing that he was saved before the fuller revelation
of the New Testament, his experience is nevertheless instructive: Abram, of
course, had faith from the time God’s glory appeared to him in Ur
of the Chaldees.[10] However,
he was not actually saved until that night, about ten years later, when “. . .
he believed in the LORD; and he counted it
to him for righteousness,” Genesis 15.6. The Apostle Paul, in his epistles to
the Romans and the Galatians, and James in his letter, both point to this event
as the occasion when Abraham was saved.[11]

With
our completed revelation including the New Testament on this side of the cross
of Calvary, we see that four things must intersect at the sinner for him to be
saved from his sins; the Spirit of God, the Word of God, and the preacher,
whose message seeks to introduce the sinner to Jesus: We know from God’s Word
that salvation is by faith.[12] The
sinner actually comes to Jesus, encounters the Savior, by faith. The question
is, how does faith come? Romans 10.17 shows us that faith comes by hearing the
Word of God, primarily through the means of preaching. Romans 10.14 describes
the preacher’s delivery of God’s Word to the sinner, who then believes to the
saving of his soul: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall
they hear without a preacher?” Mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, the
Spirit of God’s convicting and persuading work shows the sinner the
hopelessness of his situation and his desperate need of Christ as the only
savior of sinners.[13] Then, in
a way that is both mysterious and miraculous, God uses the Word to impart
spiritual life at the precise moment the sinner comes to Christ. James 1.18
shows God’s side of the equation (“Of his own will begat he us with the word of
truth”), while Luke records the sinner’s side of things in Acts 16.30-31: “Sirs,
what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved.” John 1.12-13 shows both sides in wonderful harmony: “But
as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Being
mindful that this aspect of salvation is an event, it is important to note that
moments before salvation occurs the sinner is as lost as lost can be, while
moments after salvation occurs the new saint is as saved as saved can be. There
are no degrees of salvation. A man is either completely saved or completely
lost, because salvation is a gift that is either given or not given, either
received or not received.[14] There is
no in between.

Finally, AFTER THE
“PAST TENSE” OF SALVATION HAS
TAKEN PLACE

If
a man is either completely saved or completely lost, what can be said about the
man who has been saved? Many things can be said, but we have time remaining for
me to make only a few observations related to the “past tense” of salvation:

Colossians
1.13: “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us
into the kingdom of his dear Son.” The Apostle Paul here informs his readers
that when a sinner is saved he has been removed from one spiritual domain to
another, from the realm of darkness and its power to the kingdom
of God’s dead Son.

Ephesians
2.5-6: “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ,
(by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us
sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Similar to Colossians
1.13, one who has been saved is now alive and no longer spiritually dead, and
is mysteriously seated with Christ in heaven, all the while still here in this
world.

Second
Peter 1.4: “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises:
that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the
corruption that is in the world through lust.” People who have been saved are
partakers of the divine nature, actually sharing God’s life with Him, and have
escaped the corruption that is in the world.

Here
are some other passages showing the “past tense” aspect of salvation:

·Luke 7.50: “And he said to the woman, Thy faith
hath saved thee; go in peace.”

·John 5.24: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He
that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life,
and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”

·First Corinthians 1.18: “For the preaching of
the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is
the power of God.”

·Second Corinthians 2.15: “For we are unto God a
sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish.”

·Second Timothy 1.9: “Who hath saved us,
and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according
to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the
world began.”

Though
we have only considered a portion of this topic of salvation, it is easy to see
that it truly is a great salvation. There is a great need, to be reconciled to
a great God, made possible by a great Savior, for great sinners, who will come
to Jesus by simple faith.

What
aspect of this salvation we considered today, the “past tense” of salvation, is
salvation from the penalty of sins, having your sins forgiven. If you come to
Jesus, you will be saved from the penalty of sin.